How do you like to Play?

Greetings,
I’ve been real curious about this for a long time, and didn’t find any other polls on the subject so I figured I’d start one. I mostly play ST, but SF in general. I notice that there’s a very wide range of styles of play, and a lot of players will do anything to win. It’s never just for one match either, they will consistently use only one technique to win every match. IMO that’s absolutely not any fun (they usually only play 1 main as well). Sometimes players will change how they play from one day to the next, so it’s impossible to tell what’s really going through there mind (maybe they just needed to win that day for them, no matter how). I’m definitely not judging others, I’m just very curious to see how this poll will turn out.

As for me I ALWAYS play for fun. Winning alone is never my primary objective. I play to be entertained and to test my skill against other players. That translates into, I like to be fancy, flashy, random and very fast. I like to reversal every chance, perform the difficult moves and combos (without making mistakes i.e. unintentional movements/executions). I’m really just playing against myself.

To me it’s very annoying when someone does the following low skill technique (for consecutive matches): chooses claw and repeatedly performs a safe wall dive crossup on wakeup; timed correctly this is a devastating technique, however, it’s not any fun to play against (especially when you have a character with no reversal). There is nothing wrong with doing that (it’s allowed in the game) but IMO it’s the exact opposite kind of match someone would be looking for; except for tournament play I can never really see a reason to do that. I’d like some opinions on this subject and is another reason I created the poll.

I like to play for fun … with my girlfriend in the shower! :razz:

i distinctly play to lose.

A little bit of both. Street Fighter IS serious business after all.

Showertime is top tier.

Street Fighter’s only fun to me if I’m playing to win, so, both?

lol so funny cause its true. Girlfriend goes to the shower, me = straight to the PC before I lose my ST opportunity.

On a saloon, I strictly play to win, of course. At home, with friends, I don’t really care, as long as the line is not big (3 people per console, max). I enjoy the adrenaline of the saloon more, even though I rarely find opposition nowadays, because, in Brazil, most arcade active players prefer KoF. I can not blame them too much, though: from HF to ST, from the only game I saw in an arcade cab was SSF2, and it was at a bar, not a real saloon. They can not like what they don’t know, and all they do is the Alpha series (the whole SF3 series was also not seen).

I play for fun and profit…err, and to win. But seriously, like Ultra David, winning is fun to me. So, I usually try to play my best. The way I clown around and go “for fun” is by playing a variety of characters that I’m less good with. But even with them, I’m not afraid to use their “cheapest” tactics. I just don’t do em as well.

But in response to your fundamental thought, I’ll offer this: I too used to get frustrated when I played people who would go 50 matches with a character and used one technique to win. It was frustrating. It was “boring”. It made me mad. But here’s the thing. Once you get good enough to stop that tactic, then it ceases to be a problem. And here’s the bonus: Getting good doesn’t necessarily mean doing anything visually fancy or performing crazy moves. It forces you to play smarter. And once you embrace that mindset, you’ll find that you have more fun whether you win or lose.

The details vary depending on the tactic(Fireball trap, wall dive, tick throw loops, etc). Let’s take the wall dive, for example. If you take a step back and look at it, you didn’t lose because he did the wall dive repeatedly. You lost because you played carelessly enough to allow him to knock you down while playing a character with no reversal. That may be obvious, but really let that sink in for a moment. The way to stop the wall dive isn’t reversals, it’s not letting him get that going to begin with.

Sure, it’s a lot of fun to play balls-out. It’s fun to rush down and land big, fancy combos. But if you play a tough opponent who seems boring, figure out how to not let him win. Play smarter. Try to use the cheap/boring/repetitive tactics that your character has. Once you really embrace that, you’ll find that the matches become much more chess-like and less show-boaty. And, it’s fun!

Also, let me give you a counter example. Let’s say you play Dictator, DJ, Ken…I dunno, someone with big flashy combos. And lets say you keep beating some guy with your big fancy combos. He might get frustrated. But if you didn’t do any combos and just flailed about with kicks and punches, would that make the game more fun? Maybe that wasn’t a great example, but my point is that hoping for someone to discard their strongest tactic might make the match more evenly balanced, but it won’t necessarily be the same match-up anymore.

Oh…one last thought. If you play casual matches without ever using, or rarely using, your cut-throat best techniques then it can be bad practice. First, your timing, execution, and your ability to recognize that you have an opening to use your best tactics won’t be as natural. It’ll also train you to not look for those tactics in your opponent.

I guess that was a long winded way of saying that “Playing to Win!” can be fun.

With the candlestick?

Down & dirty. Every sense of the term.

I try to play to win because how else will I ever increase my tourney skills? There’s this idea that you don’t need to practice these easy moves to be good at them. That’s perhaps true for other players but certainly not for me. Even something as seemingly simple as claw’s wall dive benefits greatly from good timing; there are actually very few situations where a wall dive is 100% safe but a large number of people either don’t know the proper counters or can’t execute them.

When you compromise raw, effective strategy with flash and lesser tactics, you develop bad habits (or at least I do). And in a tourney setting, when you encounter a situation, you’ll likely need to spend a couple more microseconds contemplating whether to respond to a situation with the most efficient method or with the flashy, risky, less effective method that you’ve been using so often.

Similarly, I prefer playing against others who play to win. Only then are you able to practice against all the ticks and cheesy tactics that will matter in tourney play. If someone ignores their cheapest, most efficient moves in casuals, that to me suggests that they’re practicing other components of their game (which I do sometimes) and means that I’ll be slightly less prepared going into my next real competition.

Also, I actually find that a huge majority of players play too honestly (no repeated wall dives, tick throws, or traps). So to reciprocate, I tend to temper my strategy as well to my detriment. I’m sometimes more hesitant on using cheesier tactics and less effective at performing them when it counts because I don’t practice them as much as I should and don’t have the right “mentality” at crucial points.

The ideal I have for ST casuals is the classic Thomas Osaki legend: play to the ultimate effectiveness of your character using whatever means regardless of whether you’re facing a pro or a beginner. That’s the quickest way to get better. Or put another way, do I really want to practice an extra few hundred hours simply because I wasted the time I had on flashy combos that I don’t care much about (although this varies from person to person)?

No holds barred was the way I used to play online before GGPO (and of course, got my fair share of folks quitting on me). Unfortunately, as of right now, I generally don’t closely follow the ideal anymore and subsequently don’t get as much value per hour of practice as I could be getting. I try to play as all the characters every time I have an ST session just to feel more balanced. So if you play me before I’m ready to “play to win,” then I probably won’t be as cheap (BTW, ShinVega, the example you used almost sounds like me, except that I haven’t played you in quite some time)

Since many folks rely on online play for practice nowadays, I think it’d be great if there was a flag to signify whether you’re playing for FUN or WIN. That way, those users who are looking for fun (actually a misnomer since winning is fun too; “fun” simply represents casual play) can enjoy their more relaxed play and those trying to hone a winning formula can try out the cheapest tactics they can think of without feeling bad and without any hard feelings.

I do understand that it can feel frustrating playing at your best against another good player for matches on end. That’s why it’s important to always focus on how to improve your strategies/execution instead of delving on the mere fact that you’re being beaten by cheesier strategies, which is a loser’s mentality. Nothing is more rewarding IMO when someone takes the momentum with your traditional cheap play, another person finds a solution and counters back, and then the first person finds a way to get around that solution, etc. And nothing is more annoying to me than when someone you just instilled that knowledge to leaves with that strategic gem yet still feels you did them a disservice by playing to win. But for me, just knowing that all my practice will pay off far more than holding back my punches leaves me satisfied.

OK, end of stream of consciousness; my apologies if what I just wrote doesn’t make any sense (early morning writing = NO). SweetJV covered what I had to say but since I had already written this and then fell asleep, I may as well submit it anyway because I know diehard ST players go for every morsel of opinion they can get, what I call the “reading to win” strategy. :wgrin:

That is exactly how I feel when playing just for fun, with the exception that the last part of the citation also applies to my main characters. :rofl: Anyway, the topic brought back sweet memories from SNES HF 2-player mode, when people could switch characters every match, regardless of who was winning.

To many things to have separate quotes here but I’ll make it concise as possible. I really should have worded the Poll question as (Is Winning the Match your Primary objective the majority of the time you play). I don’t have any problems with execution and it’s not big combos I’m trying to land. Being Flashy and Fancy to me means your playing perfectly just like a chess match (thats why i Love playing ST so much, when played perfectly it looks nice). Lemme give some examples so that everyone understands what I mean.

Example: I’m Guile I throw a Fierce SB, the opp. is T.Hawk so they jump and perform a low level Hawk. EVERY TIME I’m going to counter it with Guile’s super, which is VERY difficult considering you don’t know that there going to perform the hawk move. That’s fancy I don’t care who you are, and it’s definitely not easy to perform (and trust me I’ve screwed it up before and lost a round):rofl:.

To me how well I play is directly related to how much fun I have. Winning comes naturally after you’ve learned how to learn (i.e. actually learn how to play ST like chess). I’ll always lay the round/match on the line in order to do what I want to do (reversal super Boxer’s short low rush), because when you land something like that INTENTIONALLY it makes everyone’s jaw hit the floor (and it increases your reflex and confidence in yourself). The more you practice reflex and execution like this the better you get (mind games are an automatic). The way my mind works is if I just try to win the match, a lot of them can be won with nothing but normals, you don’t even need specials or supers.

It really is my fault for not wording the question better (I did the best I could), because I can assure that the basic point of playing the game is to win, no matter how you do it. I tried to make it clear by the example in my first post that the level of play/skill required to counter some “cheap” tactics goes way beyond the level to execute the cheap tactics themselves (when they opp. knows you can counter it and still does it, it becomes boring as hell). What I’m getting at here is ST is purely entertainment for me; however, that doesn’t mean your skill won’t increase, it really means the exact opposite. I’m not referring to casual matches either, I play every match as well as I can, never letting up and never giving up.

Unfortunately there’s no way to label yourself on GGPO on how you like to play, so you’ll have to play the people with slow reflexes that have to use cheap ass tactics to win (because they have no skill).

Side topic: Do you play cheap all the time or only do the cheeze when you need it?

Personally, I could do Rog throw loops all day, but that would be boring and less peepz would want to play with me if I did. I will do them if someone attempts non-stop ticking to me, but even then that isn’t all I would do.

Playing to win is fun.

i play to learn

I believe the constant use of tactics that are much more effective in online play (particularly, ticks and crossups) is rather dumb, because in a real match it will not work that well, or, at least, the opponent will not have such a disadvantage when fighting against it. Depending on the latency, some strategies are almost uncounterable. They turn a situation that, normally, requires a mixture of reflexes and a bit of anticipation into pure anticipation.

I believe in fighting to win, but when it matters. Some may disagree, but it is my view that online fighting games may get close to arcade/console play with better connection and prediction/lag-compensating software, but it will never be the real thing. Well, at least not in near future. Similarly, as an instance, if I am playing a casual match and I know the enemy’s stick does not block low when I switch sides, I am not going to be an ass and sweep him over and over just so I can brag I won the match, because it just does not mean shit. Fighting games are about defeating a human enemy, and that done with game knowledge, proper strategy, correct guessing, accurate execution and such, not taking advantage of inappropriate equipment or system.

Anyway, more on topic: your idea seems to be whether we play just to win, with minimum risk, or if we try things we are not confident with because of willing to get better. Sure, I try a bunch of things that require strict timing and positioning, but I am not very worked on it, because training is the only way to get better. And it is just inherent that I may lose a match as a result of it, as such actions not only have the ordinary, known counters offered by the game, but extra counters and retaliation opportunities caused by my crappy execution.

*which I never do

I play to win but, i all depends on the calibur of person that i am playing if the person is as good as i am then i play to win if there just ok then i play for fun if the suck then i leave the game. but thats just me